"Meet us at the gate in five," Dane said.
Dane had more reason than looking for Rem for starting out at first light. He wanted to find the bodies of whomever or whatever he had shot just before the sprint for the gate.
He joined Bailus, Tipper, and Joseph and the two dogs at the gate and Bax joined them a few minutes later. They backtracked first the path of their mad dash for the gate. It was an easy trail to follow; broken branches, trampled brush. The sight of the skirmish was unmistakable. The crossbows were sitting right were Dane had dropped them. But there were no bodies.
Starting at the tree from which Dane had shot, the men moved about in ever-expanding rings, but they found nothing. It bothered Dane there were no bodies. "I'm sure I killed at least the first one," he said.
"But think about it, sir," said Joseph. "You wouldn't leave the bodies of your own men just lying on the battlefield."
"So you think their friends found them and carried them off?" Dane asked.
"Whoever they were, there were certainly more than two of them in the woods last night," Joseph said.
Dane shuddered, remembering the dark figures coursing them through the trees on the way to the wall.
He went back to the crossbows and leaned against the tree as he had the night before, trying to visualize his shots once more. He looked down at the bows. The absence of the bodies and the presence of the weapons troubled him, but he wasn't exactly sure why.
Finally, Joseph shouted, "Sir, over here."
Joseph was kneeling at the base of a tree, inspecting the ground. Dane crouched beside him. The sun was up now and the light had grown about them so they could see more than when they had started their search. There was a dark stain on the forest litter at their feet. It was unmistakable.
"Well, at least we know they can bleed," said Dane. He rose. "We better start looking for signs of Rem."
***
Rawl stood looking from the open gate as Dane’s party vanished into the woods.
He had begged Dane to take him with them. But Dane had made it very clear he only wanted members of yesterday’s two search parties to accompany him. Rawl had to be content with manning the gate for them as they started their journey.
He had not known what to expect from this trip. He’d tried not to let his imagination run away with him on the voyage but he had never doubted he would be thrust into combat. He’d tried to mentally prepare himself for anything. What he hadn’t been prepared for was what he had been experiencing since his arrival on the island. Moments of terrible tension, rising almost to the level of terror, broken up by long stretches of extreme boredom.
He sighed. He was just about to close the gate when a voice spoke behind him. It held such a note of gentleness he recognized it even though it had been unknown to him before the voyage. “Master Johnson,” it said, “Are you on duty?”
Rawl turned around and smiled a greeting to Elias. “Oh, it’s just Rawl,” he said. “And no, I’m not on watch till tonight.”
“Then could I enlist your help in something?”
“Certainly, sir,” Rawl said.
Elias looked at him seriously. “It would mean going outside the walls.”
Oh, glory, Rawl thought. The mere mention of being able to get out made his heart beat faster. He would have agreed to cleaning out latrines so long as they were outside of these walls. “That’s alright with me, sir,” he said.
In truth it wasn’t. Rawl, like all the other soldiers, was not allowed to leave the compound without Dane’s or Bailus’s permission. But both of them were away and Elias was his own entity. Rawl imagined the priest answered to no one. If Elias asked him to accompany him on a mission outside the walls, that was all the authorization he needed.
“Can your brother come as well?”
“Sure.” Rawl doubted Paul would mind being volunteered. “What are we doing?”
Elias glanced away before addressing him. “I need to get rid of something.”
Rawl noticed for the first time Elias was wearing the bag he’d used last night when treating Owen. From his stance and the way he pulled at the strap, it seemed the bag contained something heavy. Rawl saw Elias did not want to discuss their business any further. He spun on his heels and started off in search of Paul.
Elias called after him, “And bring a pick and shovel.”
***
In a little clearing beside the stream, not far from where they'd started their hike up into the hills the day before, Dane and the others found Rem. What was left of him anyway.
At first they were not even sure what they were looking at; the body was so covered with flies, sluggish in the morning chill. Even when the flies lifted, it took a moment of staring to comprehend what they were seeing. When he did, Dane glanced at Joseph and found the young man would not meet his gaze.
“Well,” said Bax, “Looks like at least someone was having fun last night.”
“I was ready to kill him for running out on us,” Joseph said. “But this…” He shook his head.
Rem's weapons, his crossbow and his knife, standard equipment for Hallander soldiers, lay at his feet. Dane noted their presence and realized why finding his own crossbows had bothered him. Whoever had done this had intentionally left their weapons. They wanted to send a message. They neither had need of nor feared the weapons of Dane's soldiers. But that was not the worst of it.
Rem had been impaled on a long wooden spike which stood out of the ground at an angle, rather like a paling in an earthworks defense. The shaft passed through his lower back and out through his chest to one side of the sternum. It held him in more or less a sitting position. His arms hung at his sides but his hands had been severed at the wrists and were nowhere to be seen. His jaw had been broken so that it hung open to one side; his mouth forming a squished "o".
Worst of all, his eyes were open. The mark had been cut in his forehead. Seeing the mark, Dane was reminded of what he'd wanted to tell Bailus the night before, but this wasn't the time or place. "Let's get him off of there," he said.
It was a terrible job. With Bailus supporting the corpse's legs, Dane and Tipper put their hands against Rem's back and heaved upwards and forwards to push him off the spike. They couldn't do it all at one go. They had to heave together and then rest, kneeling in the dirt and letting Rem's body rest on their shoulders. Then they pushed and lifted again. By the sound, Dane thought they broke at least one of Rem's ribs in the process.
Bax dropped to his hands and knees on the bank and vomited into the stream. He splashed his face and sat down on a rock, watching the water.
It was hard work and when they had freed Rem's body and laid it out on the ground, Dane's legs were shaking but not from the effort. "Bax," he said, "Take Joseph with you and get picks and shovels. We'll have to find a place to bury him."
Bax and Joseph started off.
“Wait,” Dane said. “Bring back a sheet. And don't tell the others what you saw here."
***
Rawl and Paul followed Elias through the woods. Rawl doubted Elias knew where they were or where they were going any more than he did, but the young priest seemed to be looking for something.
Finally, they entered a little clearing and Elias stopped in the center of it. He looked around at the wall of trees which encircled them. He turned to the twins. “It’s peaceful here, don’t you think?”
It was peaceful, but in a solemn, silent way. It was too quiet for Rawl’s liking. There were no birds singing or cicadas buzzing. Rawl thought about it; he could not remember hearing the sound of a single creature since entering the woods.
“This will do,” Elias said. He set down his bag, took the pick, and began tearing up the earth in the center of the clearing.
Rawl, who had carried the shovel, began to dig out the loose earth when Elias stepped aside. They took turns. Resting, picking, scooping. Eventually they had a narrow, round hole that came to Rawl’s shoulders. The work went slower as the hole got deeper as it was too narr
ow to swing the pick and they had to rely only on the shovel. They scooped the earth out with a small pail Elias had brought.
“That’s good,” Elias said, stepping to the edge of the hole and looking down.
He gave Rawl a hand and helped pull him up. Paul handed him the canteen and as he stood drinking he watched Elias step to the edge of the clearing and pick up his bag. He set the bag on the edge of the hole and reached in with both hands and pulled something out. It was a small object, fitting easily in Elias’s cupped hands, wrapped in dark cloth. Rawl stepped closer. He realized the cloth was damp and shining.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It is the stone I used last night on Owen,” Elias said.
“And the cloth?” Paul asked.
“Soaked in sacred oil from the temple of Kran, to help contain the dark energies the stone absorbed.”
“You’re going to bury it?” Rawl said.
“It’s the only thing to do with it,” Elias said.
“What’ll happen to it,” Paul asked.
“If we’re lucky, nothing,” Elias said. “It will lie here hidden with its darkness until the end of time.”
The stone did not hum or glow or pulse as Rawl might have imagined it doing if someone had been telling him this story. All the same, he was glad Elias never asked him to touch it. Elias let the stone fall into the hole in its cloth shroud. He stepped back from the pit. His face was pale and drawn. He sat down on the edge of the clearing. “Fill it in, please,” he said.
Rawl and Paul and Elias returned to the compound in silence. Elias had thanked them for their help and they felt good about what they had done but they did not feel it was the type of thing to tell others about. All three sat in somber silence as they ate their noon meal as though the grave peace of the clearing had settled over them.
They were still at the table when Dane found them.
Until now, the colony on Haven had not known death. The population had been composed largely of workers, all relatively young and healthy, so there was no graveyard. Dane selected a space on the far side of the meadow in which the garden sat. It was visible from the wall but not ostentatious.
Dane dug the grave and wrapped Rem's body in the sheet before bringing it to the new graveyard. Then he went and found Elias. Of all the members of the expedition, Dane told Elias alone about the state of Rem’s body. The priest seemed especially troubled by the severed hands.
They buried Rem with all members of the company present. Elias said a few prayers. No one else spoke. It seemed there was nothing to be said.
Dane's little group returned to the compound to eat, then spent the rest of the afternoon searching for Edric, Markis, and Franklin.
They retraced the first leg of Bailus's squad’s journey into the swamp. They swept in large semicircles across the area north of the settlement. They found nothing.
"Your leadership is in rare form here, your highness," said Bax as they completed their last sweep and turned back towards the walls. "You spend your first day getting your men lost in the woods. Then you waste all the next day searching for them and burying them. I wonder what you'll have for us tomorrow."
Dane said nothing. He had hoped Bax would recognize Dane's sending him for the shovels (and away from the body) as a mercy, a peace-offering. If Bax had noted this, he made no sign of it.
"Don't lose heart, sir," Bailus said. "Edric may be a fool, but he's also a very good woodsman. He may yet find his way back."
There were two encouraging sights waiting for Dane and his party upon their return to the settlement.
One was Owen. He was walking around, hardly limping, even smiling.
“How are you feeling?” Dane asked.
“Fine, sir, but I had the strangest dreams last night.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dane said. “Do you want to talk about them?”
“Even if I wanted to I don’t think I could. They’re all a blur now. But it’s like a taste, or many tastes, that linger in my mouth. Some of it was bad, but some of it was beautiful.”
The other welcome sight was Forsythe and his crew.
“Find anything?” Dane asked.
“Hardly anything worth reporting.” Forsythe pulled out a map. “Like it shows here, there’s a small cove and beach on the northwest side of the island. It’s really about the only suitable place to land other than our harbor.”
“Did you put in?”
“We drove up on the beach and kicked around. Nothing much to see. A few footprints of big birds, cranes or something, in the sand. Some of the men wanted to try to find one and try their luck bringing it down but I said anything that big would be terribly gamy.”
“Any chance an enemy could have put in there?”
“And attacked the colony? Not likely. Right off the beach they’d have to climb steep hills. That’s the tallest point of the island from what we could see. Like I said, we checked out the beach but we were glad to get back to the ship, especially after the night we’d had.”
Dane raised his eyebrows and Forsythe continued. “Oh, nothing serious, sir. No one hurt. And I feel almost silly talking about it now in the daylight. But night found us off the northern edge of the island. We reefed the sail and dropped anchor as we wanted to continue or tour by daylight. Right after sundown they started.”
“What started?”
“The screams, sir. We thought you would all have heard them, too.”
“We heard some of them,” Dane said.
“We thought they’d never stop,” Forsythe said. “Kran, how they carried over the water. I think they were rolling right down from the hills above us. Some of the men said they thought it’d be easier if they knew what was making them, but I think I’d give all I owned to never know. I don’t think any of us slept a wink.”
Dane pulled Bailus aside as soon as he had finished talking with Forsythe. "Can we talk?"
"Certainly, sir," Bailus said, turning to face him.
"Alone," Dane said.
Bailus nodded. "Let's go to the barracks at the back gate; all the men will be gone to supper."
The barracks was deserted. Dane looked at the two short rows of bunks. He saw Rem's pack leaning against the side of a bottom bunk. A bed that had not been slept in last night, nor likely ever would be again. He wondered how many more of these bunks would be empty before they got off the island.
"There was something you wanted to say, sir?" Bailus said softly.
Dane turned to face him where he sat on his bunk pulling off his boots. "I was wrong, Bailus."
Bailus paused with his boot still half on his foot. "Sir?"
"About the island. Or about whoever or whatever attacked the people here."
Bailus finished pulling his boot off and set both feet on the floor and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He nodded to Dane to continue.
"I was sure the colony had been attacked by one of the other houses, by some force from the mainland. But I don't think that's what happened at all. Whoever attacked the colony, they weren't invaders. They were defenders. They'd been on the island before, maybe long before the colonists ever came. And they're still here."
Bailus was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. "The mark carved on Rem's body; the same mark as was tattooed on Old Ben."
Dane nodded. "Yes, Rem's mark. But that's not all. Rem's mark only reminded me of what I'd seen yesterday."
Bailus looked up at him, startled.
"I saw the same mark yesterday. Carved in stone in the high heart of the island."
"Carved in stone?"
"Yes, on some kind of structure. The stone was a column of sorts, supporting a temple, I think. It looked like it had been carved years ago. Ages ago."
"Why didn't you mention this yesterday?"
"I forgot about it in all the excitement with Owen."
Bailus was silent for a moment. "But it's impossible," he said. "If there were other people here - I mean, living here - it would be obvious. There'd be buildings
, towns."
"We haven't explored nearly all the island yet," Dane said.
"No, but the colonists would have by now. They would have discovered another population months ago."
"Maybe they'd only recently discovered them, and their interaction led to the fighting that destroyed the colony."
"But this makes no sense," Bailus said.
"I don't understand it any more than you do. But I'm sure of it. Whoever did this calls this place home. And you can be sure they won't like our presence here any more than they did the colonists’."
Bailus called an immediate assembly of the men at the front gate. They shuffled out of the dining hall slowly, complaining about having to leave their suppers half-eaten. When they saw Bailus standing there in his armor and boots and grasping his hammer, the conversation died on their lips and they fell into ranks before him.
"From this point on," he said, "We are in a state of war. You are to be constantly alert, ceaselessly alert, and always ready. Ready for anything. You'll wear your armor whether you're on watch or patrol or off duty."
"What, sir,” Paul asked, “You mean you want us to sleep in it?"
Bailus waited until the nervous laughter died away.
"Master Johnson," he said, "I want you to bathe in it. As you know, Rem was killed last night. We believe he was killed within sight of these very walls. From now on, when you're on watch, you keep a hand on your bow and the other on your quiver and you keep both eyes on the woods. You don't come off watch until your replacement arrives to relieve you. If no one comes, you don't leave your post, not even to look for them. Every square inch of this island outside these walls is to be counted hostile territory. These gates are to remain shut at all times. You don't set foot outside this wall without the permission of me or Captain Hallander, and even then you don't do it without a partner. Get good with your gods, gentlemen. I want you ready to kill or be killed at every moment with no warning. Is that clear?"
There was a moment's silence. Rawl broke it. "But, sir, who is the enemy?"
Bailus turned to study the pines which rose beyond the wall; black, spiky towers they looked in the dark. He turned back to Rawl. "Whatever's out there."
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